Whittwood Theatre

My name is Leonard and the Whittwood Theatre my first job which started in November 1980 when I was 16 years old! Like a few others here, I was there until the last day that it operated though I continued on with Pacific until early 1991. This theatre was such a fun time for me, I lived on Scott Ave and to get to work all I had to do was hop over the cinder block wall between the apartment building and the back of the theatre. I like to joke that the first black eye I ever had was caused by the capital letter E. A few times I had to change the marque and once while on a ladder I didn’t quite have clips of one of the raised plastic letters hooked onto the marque and it slipped striking me right below my eye. It might not have been an E, but I had to pick a letter to make it easier to tell the story!

The building occupied by Fitness Active now has the address 10125 Whittwood Drive, so that must be just about where the theater was located. The March 15, 1965, Boxoffice article about the Whittwood Theatre can be seen at this link. An additional photo of the auditorium is on the subsequent page of the magazine.

Rich37: The Whittwood didn’t have a traditional marquee. Jutting out at a right angle from the front of the building was a two-sided attraction board of the sort that were used at drive-ins. There’s a photo of it in the March 15, 1965, issue of Boxoffice Magazine.

That’s true. If you were facing the mall area from Whittier blvd the theater was in the back right corner. There was actually quite some distance between it and Farrell’s

Gary

The Whittwood Theatre opened in 1964. It was among the theatres on which construction had begun during 1963, as listed in Boxoffice Magazine’s annual review of new and remodeled theaters. An exterior photo appeared in a Boxoffice feature on October 25, 1964, and a closeup shot of its entrance appeared on the front page of the magazine’s The Modern Theatre section of December 7 that year. It was the subject of an entire article in the Boxoffice issue of March 15, 1965.

The Whittwood was built for Bruen’s Whittier Theatres. It had 960 seats, a fifty-foot curved screen, and the auditorium walls were paneled with a gold damask fabric to match the stage drapes. The building was designed by Whitter architect Ray W. Johnson, and the Los Angeles office of the B.F. Shearer Co. handled the interior layout, design, and equipment.

A photo of the auditorium in the 1965 Boxoffice article showed a feature I had forgotten from my one visit to the Whittwood. Unlike stadium sections in older theaters I had been in, that at the Whittwood was elevated several feet above the main floor, so patrons had to climb a fairly long staircase leading from the cross-aisle to get into it, and would be several rows back by the time they reached the seats. Then they would have to descend stepped side-aisles to reach seats in the first few rows. I suppose this design was adopted to make more room for the lobby and restrooms, which were tucked under the stadium section.

That’s a great pic Gary! Any more??

Alma

The first paragraph of the introduction should be edited to remove the reference to a “big balcony,” as there was no such thing. Rather, there was a modest-sized elevated loge section in back, stadium-style.

Featured on 7/16/69 – “Peter Pan” and “Alaskan Eskimo”. Phone number was 943-8312. Address was 10125 Whitwood.

I used to work at the Whittwood Theatre during the early 1970’s. I have a lot of fond memories! The manager and employees were just a fantastic group of people to work with!

The Whittwood Theatre specialized in Disney films. The ticket lines would stretch around the theatre for some of the films. We had ‘Herbie the Love Bug’ drive all around Whittier. A doorman dressed up as a lion for ‘Napoleon and Samantha’. We had the western look for the ‘Apple Dumpling Gang’, complete with a play on the stage before the movie. One of our favorites was ‘One Little Indian’. In the lobby, we had Indian crafts and dress on display and had Indian dancing outside.

I have access to a lot of information on the building of the Whittwood Theatre, the design, layout, equipment, etc. I will post as much of that as I can at a later date. Someone out there might find it interesting.

If there are any former employees out there or any patrons that would like to respond with fond memories, please do. I would love to hear from you.

What a great time we had!

The Whittwood was my first real regular projectionist job when I won the bid back in May 1976 at the age of 23. Up to then the union had sent me to theatres all over Los Angeles. The Whittwood still had carbon arc lamps (Ashcraft Corelight) and were still on two thousand foot reels when I got there and when I left in March ‘83. The projector heads were old Century C’s and the sound heads were Simplex. Amplification came from an Ampex sound rack. The booth was small and designed by the BF Shearer Company which had designed many similar booths. The Whittwood was a Disney house and I must have ran the entire Disney film library when I was there. The auditorium was stadium style similar to the old Stadium theatre in Torrance which later became a Pussycat theatre. The Whittwood had a lodge level about two-thirds back, similar to the Cinerama Dome’s (but smaller) which I later worked for nearly 11 years. I took some pictures of the Whittwood’s booth, auditorium, lobby, entrance and outside marquee back in '76 and '77 and if I ever find them I will post a good one here.

One more historical note. Ralph Kemp sent a projectionist on a night that I took off from the Whittwood back in 1979. We were running a movie called Saturday Night Fever. When I came to work the next day I was confronted by the manager who had a complaint about the projectionist. It seems that as the Saturday Night Fever credits were rolling on the screen the projectionist was switching the stage lights on and off to the beat of the Bee Gees “Staying Alive”. Needless to say there were plenty of noise and sparks flying from the breaker switch panel that was next to the managers office. There were also plenty of sparks flying from the manager when he told me that the projectionist who was playing with the stage lights was none other than Jim Childs.

Such great memories.

Re Stevebob’s question on who remembers the sun sculpture with the inscription, I think I recall that from the dusty recesses of my brain, lol!

Guess the new mall will be another generic type mall??

This was indeed a modern marvel when it opened. Very space age! If I’m not mistaken, the theater opened with “Zulu” in 1964. I was 8 years old and HAD to go to this new theater — it didn’t really matter what was playing.

One correction, though. There was no balcony in the sense of a shelf that projected out over the orchestra section. I would describe the design as stadium-style seating. The entrance to the auditorium from the lobby was via one of two tunnels that led to the cross-aisle at the rear of the main seating area. From here, there were stairs leading into an elevated loge area from which one had the sense of being in a balcony, even though that was not the case.

In its early years, the Whittwood Theater seemed to be a thriving addition to the Whittwood Mall, which was anchored by a very beautiful and modern Broadway department store. Does anyone remember the sun sculpture next to the mall-side entrance to the store with the inscription, “The windows of my soul I throw wide open to the sun” by John Greenleaf Whittier?